Reference #: 01205
The University of South Carolina is offering licensing opportunities for use of a method of enabling adjustments to nanostructures where their architectural features can be changed independently, at will.
Invention Description:
The subject invention is a method/procedure that enables adjustments to nanostructures (produced by self-assembly) where the architectural features can be changed independently, at will.
Background:
Porous and nanoscale architectures of inorganic materials have become crucial for a range of energy and catalysis applications, where the ability to control the morphology largely determines the transport characteristics and device performance. Despite the availability of a range of block copolymer self-assembly methods, the conditions for tuning the key architectural features such as the inorganic wall-thickness have remained elusive. It’s against this backdrop that the study leading up to the development of this new technology was performed to develop solution processing guidelines that enable isomorphic nanostructures with tunable wall-thickness.
Potential Applications:
Pharmaceutical applications that use micelles for drug delivery, electrochemical devices such as pseudocapacitors, dye-sensitized solar cells, mesoscopic perovskite solar cells, batteries, supercapacitors, fuel cells, and photoelectrochemical devices for solar fuels all take advantage of access to nanomaterials with adjustable pore size and wall thickness.
Advantages and Benefits:
Other methods of micelle templating do not allow for orthogonal control over features. For example, changes to the recipe for wall-thickness control generally result in different pore sizes at the same time. This method expands upon prior capabilities by the use of kinetic entrapment to prevent micelle templates from responding to changing process conditions.